بررسي نقش و جايگاه پليس در مديريت بحران هنگام بروز بلاياي طبيعي با تاكيد بر زلزله بم

Survey on Police Role and Position in Crisis Management during a Natural Calamity: Focus on Bam Earthquake

Natural calamities are a part of the environment where we live; and despite of advancement achieved, human being has not been able to prevent them. Due to being located on Alps-Himalaya earthquake belt, earthquake is one of the major calamities which occasionally hit a part of Iran. Not being able to forecast earthquake occurrence time and the extent of the cities and the population density of the cities being located on faults makes the society and country vulnerable severely. Hence, paying attention to the weak and vulnerable points in country should be considered as priorities of management master plans. Crises originated from natural disasters due to electricity failure and disruption in the natural trend of life such as fatality, wound, disability, destruction of social institutions and emerge of huge volume of human needs such as shelter, food, clothes, first aids and advanced medical facilities all together, require potent management on the part of those in charge and executive institutions. In the meantime, it is pretty essential for the crisis management system to introduce ways for preventing crisis and/ or mitigate its destructive impacts through scientific and systematic observation of crises and analyzing them. Therefore, crises resulted from natural calamities are divided into two general categories: 1- Limited and regional crises which can be handled through mobilizing local forces and dispatching limited number of relief-medicinal forces from adjacent regions. 2- Ambient and huge crises which require full-scale mobilization of national and international forces to take care of hurt people and mitigate physical and human impacts of the crisis. It should be noticed that the level of vulnerability to natural calamities, especially earthquake; and Jack of a comprehensive crisis management system in the country and consequently in the involved organizations on one hand, and the ambiguous responsibilities of every organization and overlap of their duties, all together with respect to the past experiences has led the or- ganizations involve in crisis management to be away from their real role in different levels. Meanwhile, measures taken by these organizations have been challenged and the legal and executive gap issue has been posed, so that Bam earthquake was a real criterion to make completely clear the gaps, weaknesses and ambiguities of the crisis comprehensive and systematic scheme, lack of coordination among organizations and organs involved-state and military-, confusion in carrying out their responsibilities, commitment of organizations involved in crisis control; and responsibility overlap during crisis. Police force, which is considered to be one of the important organizations involved in crisis management and the organization responsible for control and establishment of internal security, is not an exception to the rule. In other words, police force has encountered numerous barriers during Bam earthquake.